Why Marketing Is More Important Than Ever

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1 Why Marketing Is More Important Than Ever Do your customers care about your message? Today s there are estimated million Americans are users, which represents nearly 90 percent of total internet users, it is essential to follow best practices to get into your target market inbox. Your recipients have to interact with your messages they have to open and click around. Today s reality demands that you center your marketing around the customer by orchestrating messages that are relevant to each individual s preferences and behavior. This means sending less and paying more attention to the data you ve collected about your customers. If you aren t paying attention to segmentation, dynamic content, and engagement, you will find that a majority of your messages end up in a bulk or spam folder. As the volume of commercial traffic skyrockets (up 7% since 2014 and 16% since 2013) and spam tactics continue to evolve, mailbox providers are forced to constantly refine their filtering technology to keep unwanted mail out of the inbox. In this ever-changing landscape, even the best senders struggle to keep up with increasingly sophisticated filtering tactics. Regardless of the reason, declining inbox placement rates represent a serious concern for marketers. With one out of every five s failing to land in the inbox, brands are missing out on a full 20% of their opportunities to connect with customers and earn their business. IT companies are filtering up to 55% external mail. It should be no surprise that getting your messages to the inbox is increasingly more difficult. We hope you use this guide for future reference. The DemandGen Deliverability Team

2 List Building Best Practices Asking for permission and setting expectations are two basics when it comes to acquisition. The most significant deliverability problems are the result of problems with the signup process. While a particularly acute problem for retailers collecting addresses in store, the signup process can cause troublesome for any business collecting addresses. New signups can introduce major problems into your otherwise well-tended list. Best Practices for new signups The risk of triggering spam filters is compounded with the addition of new signups. If you find yourself with a backlog of new signups, don t to them all at once. The following poor acquisition practices increase the risk of triggering filtering or blocking: High hard bounce High spam complaint rates Low response and subscriber engagement rates Spam trap hits Volume spikes Unaccepted flavors of opt-in DemandGen recognizes the following subscriber acquisition methods as consent: Double Opt-in and Opt-in Confirm are the strongest methods of acquisition and should be utilized when acquiring addresses through riskier channels such as POS collection. Those subscribers that enter your list through Double Opt-in/Opt-in Confirm are showing that they truly want to hear from you and will likely show higher engagement levels with future campaigns. This method also helps prevent bad addresses from entering your list. Opt-in and Checked-Box Opt-in are the two most common methods marketers employ today. Although a follow up or welcome is not required it is highly recommended. Offline Opt-in and Opt-in Confirm are less reliable methods and can potentially degrade the quality of your list. With these methods, you run the risk of collecting faulty addresses and/or generating high spam complaints. Stay Away from Appends and Purchased Lists These tactics erode brands and create major deliverability issues. The address segments are characterized by a lack of response very low open and low click rates. And because these users had never expected to receive from the sender, the lists can generate many spam trap hits, higher bounces, unsubscribes and complaints. That puts the sender s deliverability reputation at risk and requires a great deal of effort to restore. Due to the highly unreliable nature of addresses being collected, the possibility that the sender s IP could become blacklisted greatly increases. This can be especially damaging at widely used blacklists such as Spamhaus. Once an IP is blacklisted, then any messages from that IP will be blocked by ISPs referencing that blacklist. List sponsorship with verified bloggers or niche sites must be approached with caution. Create a Strong Drip Marketing Program When a subscriber is first added to your list, it is a good idea to send them a series of s welcoming them to your program. With these s, you should clearly communicate your opt-in/permission policy and set expectations for what is to come in future s. You should also use this opportunity to let them know how often they can expect to receive your s and how to opt-down or change their preferences if necessary. A simple welcome campaign can go a long way in establishing a good relationship with new subscribers.

3 Top Four Tips for adding new sign ups Require double field confirmation. Consider using an validation vendor to clean out known hard bounces before you send for the first time. Send a welcome message or series to communicate clearly and reinforce subscriber expectations. Don t incent sales associates for signups. This leads to very low quality entry. address validation vendors help reduce bounce rates by flagging invalid addresses, including: Duplicates Typos Formatting problems Syntax errors Dead domains FCC-mandated wireless blocks And the DMA s Do Not records Where possible, they also flag bogus and malicious addresses as well as some spam trap and honeypot addresses to help minimize support issues and keep you off of blacklists. The Wrong Way to Collect Addresses As mentioned previously, it s not a good idea to incent sales associates for signups as it leads to a very low quality of addresses entered. Here s why: Sales associate misunderstands the correct address. Customer gives a fake address to get the offer. Customer might not know their correct address or provides an old address they no longer use. Sales associate or the customer mistypes the address. Customer doesn t understand they will receive promotional . Customer who receives any beyond an ereceipt is often surprised. New signups risk a Spamhaus listing because ing multiple times to a new registrant who never opens or clicks is a high risk gamble. This newly acquired address can likely be a spam trap, and repeated ing to it can trigger a blacklisting. Warming Up Your IP Address Like going on a first date, you only have one chance to make a good first impression with ISPs. Successful warm up starts with establishing a good sender reputation over the first several days of ing. Let s use the analogy of someone who has no credit history going to a bank for loan. Since you have no standing, the bank will naturally be suspicious of your ability to repay the loan. The same basic logic applies to how your new IP is treated by the respective ISP filters. You have to establish your reputation as a good sender before the ISP filters will allow you to send your campaigns without interruption. Warming up your IP address improves delivery performance, establishes credibility with ISPs, and builds your reputation as a legitimate sender.

4 How to fix the problem You can start with selecting a few campaigns that typically perform well campaigns that usually have high open and click through rates. Starting with your best performing campaigns will begin to train ISP filters to see that the you send is well received by your subscribers. In addition to selecting your best campaigns, segment your audience to include only your most engaged subscribers. ISPs tell us they want to see s sent to a small, highly engaged audience at volume levels they have prescribed during the first days of IP warm up. The best way to do this is to segment your audience by how long it s been since a subscriber has opened or clicked on an message from you. During the first week of sending from your new IP, only send to addresses that have opened or clicked on a message from you recently in the past three months for example. The specific criteria will vary for each sender based on size of your list, etc. but sending only to recently engaged subscribers is critical during the warmup period. After the initial warm up, you need to ramp up volume gradually over the course of four to six weeks for high volume senders. If you increase sending volumes too quickly from day to day, you may run into ISP volume triggers. Ramping up your sending volume over time will establish a volume profile, and allow you to reach your regular sending volumes. Common Pitfalls to Avoid During IP Warm Up The road to IP warm up wonderland, as it were, is filled with potential hazards and marketers need to be aware of these at all times. From our experience, the most common pitfalls to avoid during IP warm up include: low subscriber engagement and high spam complaints, too many hard bounces, and increasing sending volume too quickly.

5 Here s how to avoid these common pitfalls: While building sender reputation on your new IP address, send to a small, highly engaged audience. Send your most relevant campaigns, and send only to people who have opened or clicked on an message recently. This is critical. By sending to a highly engaged audience, you ll also be keeping spam complaints and spam trap hits to a minimum. Exclude new signups from any campaigns you send during the first week of the warm up process. While new signups usually have high open rates, they also have high hard bounce rates and may include spam traps that will hurt your fledgling sender reputation. Insist on porting over all suppression files from your previous provider. Any address that hard bounced, unsubscribed, or complained on your previous platform must remain suppressed. High hard bounce (invalid) rates are the fastest way to trigger filtering and blocking on your new IP. Ramp up sending volume slowly and in gradual increments is very important. Authentication 101 These are the key measures of authentication used today: SPF. The Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an open standard method to prevent sender address forgery. It enables the verification of a sender s IP address by crosschecking the domain in the Mail From line of an against the published record a sender has registered in the Domain Name System (DNS). DKIM. Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) provides a method for validating whether an message was sent by an authorized source. DKIM utilizes cryptographic authentication. It requires a sender s computer to generate public/private key pairs and then publish the public keys into their Domain Name System (DNS) records. DMARC. Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) standardizes how receivers perform authentication using both of the well-known SPF and DKIM mechanisms. This means that senders will experience consistent authentication results for their messages at AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo!, and any other receiver implementing DMARC. TLS. Transport Layer Security (TLS), is a protocol that encrypts and delivers mail securely. It helps to ensure no third party can intercept and tamper with an message. TLS is designed to prevent eavesdropping and spoofing (message forgery) between mail servers. TLS is a standardsbased protocol based on Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), and is rapidly being adopted as the standard for secure . The protocol uses cryptography to provide endpoint authentication and communications privacy over the Internet. TLS is the equivalent of HTTPS for web communications and has similar Secrets to New Subscriber Engagement Personalizing your marketing based on customer data such as channel preference and purchase history is what fundamentally drives high engagement with s. And, the need to keep your subscribers engaged takes on a whole new meaning and level of importance when it comes to the topic of deliverability since a lot of the major ISPs are looking at and monitoring user-level engagement to determine inbox delivery. The more sophisticated marketers become in personalizing individual customer experiences, the more relevant messages become, which drives more engagement and more inbox placement versus junk folder placement. Opens and clicks and the recency of those activities is often the metric used to determine engagement level. When those in your database become uninterested and stop clicking on your s, there can be adverse effects on deliverability. Recipient actions that contribute to a positive engagement quotient are: Clicking through links Adding an address to their contacts or address book Enabling images Opening the message Scrolling through the message

6 Recipient actions that contribute to a negative engagement quotient are: Reporting as spam Deleting the message Moving the message to trash Marking messages as read Ignoring messages

7 Extended Buying Cycle Consumers Since the period in between purchases can be quite long, it s important to monitor your subscribers to ensure the addresses are still active. Without regularly communicating and monitoring engagement, your list may start to fill up with bad addresses and uninterested subscribers that are likely to complain. A buildup of old/inactive addresses could also lead to spam trap issues. The goal is to find an effective communication strategy to keep subscribers interested without overwhelming them. It s also important to recognize the right time to remove certain subscribers from your list. Global Deliverability Tips: Argentina Explicit consent is required. Argentina has a public do not contact list the DNPDP that must be honored. Australia Explicit consent is a must. Very strong laws regarding permission and data privacy. Australian ISPs are very responsive to consumer issues. Belgium Opt-in is required and the sender is responsible for refer-a-friend consent and managing those opt-outs, making this practice dangerous. Finland All marketing messages must be clearly marked as advertisements France Consent is required for ing. French ISPs historically accept fewer connections making delivery times slower. Germany Strong laws requiring opt-in. If a recipient opts-out of a mailing, all data must be erased from the sender s database. Hong Kong Expressed consent is required and it must be different from T&C acceptance. Consent must be clearly differentiated and easy to understand. Italy Prior consent required for marketing messages. End-user consent is required for cookie use and senders must disclose if any data will be shared with a third party. Netherlands Pre-checked boxes are not allowed as a mode of consent. Russia There are no current electronic privacy laws. Russian ISPs such as mail. ru can be challenging. Having a local business presence is very helpful. ISPs like Yandex have begun offering senders new insight into campaigns. Spain Maintains a government do not mail list. Japan All must contain clear and visible information for sender name and title, correct address for an opt-out (must be at the top of the ) and the sender s address and phone number must also be displayed. Canada The Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) took effect July 1, The full provisions roll out over three years. Explicit permission and private right of action are the most important measures. Singapore All messages must contain an unsubscribe link, phone number, and a postal address. This information must be in English. Unsubscribes must be handled within 10 days.